Contract

by Simon Spurrier

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Life becomes complicated when the dead won't stay dead, in this stunning debut by Simon Spurrier. Michael Point doesn't seem anything special. He dresses conservatively, is thoughtful, methodical and well spoken. He also happens to kill people for a living. It's not about getting back at the world; for Michael it's much simpler than that: It's All About The Money. But things are starting to get strange: his hits are coming back to life and trying to kill him. Is he losing his mind? Or is could it be that the things he sees aren't delusions at all, but hints of a divine conflict: a heavenly war, sucking him in...?

Release date: July 21, 2011

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 420

Sample

Interview Room 2

This sort of guy, the way he jangles his keys, you just know he’s sexually frustrated. This sort of guy, if this was in a bar, he picks at the corner of his beer label and peels it up till it rips. He flips cardboard mats off the edge of the table and tears them without thinking. This sort of guy, if this was in a bar, he eats complimentary peanuts when he’s not hungry and jiggles his left foot up and down like a street drill.

Today and here and now, this is not in a bar. Where this is, you’ve got to assume it’s underground. This place, with the guy and his keys, with the woman prodding me along from behind, the thing is: lack of windows. The thing is, strip lights, meaty walls. Cables and pipes on the inside.

This place, you’ve got to assume that thing with the air, that stillness, that heaviness, it means we’re buried. You’ve got to assume it’s rock and soil behind every breeze-block, worms and moles headbutting at concrete. You’ve got to assume, somewhere, there are stairs going up.

This place, when you shout out loud, eats up the echoes like soundproofing. This place, down here, everything is migraine-noisy.

So these two goons, this man and this woman, these two pinstriped nightmares in smart worksuits and polished shoes, these two fashion-corpses with name badges and matching socks, with jangling keys and shoving hands, they lead me to a door that says ‘Interview Room 2’.

Heavy-arsed hinges, hardcore locks. Opening, it groans like a whale.

The funny thing is, seriously, I have no idea how long I’ve been underground. Down here you’ve got to assume they turn lights on and off at the same time every day. You’ve got to assume they feed you three times during Lights On, and they’re not just messing with your head.

They could, you know. Disrupting diurnal rhythms. Fucking with your circadian cycles.

The funny thing is, underground, until these two robot-suits, these dead-faced smuganauts, these paid-to-be-grim authority machines, until they came and fetched me from my cell, I hadn’t seen another human being since I arrived.

Whenever that was.

Given why I’m here, you have to wonder what sort of sick bastard ends up in Interview Room 1.

Down here, underground, these clockwork thugs, these law-chimps, these smarm-monsters, they cluster round and do that shove-in-the-small-of-the-back thing. This is like you’ve seen on American police shows. This is propelling me out of the corridor and through the door.

‘Sit,’ the guy says. The guy with perfect teeth, this sexually repressed gimp, this floppy-haired public-school disgrace to the gene pool, his name is Jason Durant. It says so on his badge. I recognise him from somewhere, and I think maybe he visited me in hospital. I can’t be sure. I don’t know how long ago that was.

He doesn’t look like a Jason.

He looks like a Paul, maybe. Or a Jim.

Or a Sam. He looks like a Sam.

Scratch that. What he looks like is an arsehole.

In Interview Room 2, if you want to know, there’s a smell. This smell, it’s from every school hallway you were ever in, every doctor’s waiting room, every public toilet, every terminal-patients-only-easywipe-walls-AIDS-zombie-in-the-corner hospital ward. This smell, it’s something to do with magnolia paint and breeze-blocks and linoleum floors. It’s something to do with cheap detergent and plastic chairs and forgotten urine and Confused Old People, et cetera et cetera.

Listen. That smell, seriously, what it’s mostly to do with, just so you know, is this: a complete, one hundred per cent lack of hope.

I’m sitting in a plastic chair. Not on it, you understand. It’s that kind of chair. Down here I’m sitting without any handcuffs, without a light in my face, without a packet of cigarettes and without a mirror.

I expected a mirror. A big one.

‘You’re Michael Point?’ asks Jason a.k.a. Jack a.k.a. Jim a.k.a. Sam. This is from the other side of the table, with him and the woman facing me. This is him still fiddling with his keys in his jacket pocket.

I expected a mirror, a big unnatural one-way-glass mirror, because where else will the sergeant stand to watch? Or the little guy, you know the one, with wide-rimmed glasses and old-style recording gear? And a clipboard. In movies, he’s always got a clipboard, that little rat-man.

There’s always a mirror. Only, look, not in Interview Room 2.

‘Call me Mike,’ I say. ‘Aren’t you going to record this?’

The thing with there being no mirror, also: there are no cameras.

And Jason, all sexually frustrated, all hitching curtains of hair out of his face, he looks across at his colleague. Her name badge, it’s sort of hard to read on account of being right next to her boob. I keep getting distracted. Her name badge, I think it starts with an ‘A’.

Jason says, ‘Yeah. We’re recording this. We’re recording everything.’ And he waves a hand, like maybe I’m an idiot for not noticing the cameras and microphones poking from the walls. Like maybe only a complete fuckwit would ask a question like ‘Aren’t you going to record this?’ Like maybe out of all the pond slime that’s sat in my seat, across the table from him in Interview Room 2, no other stupid moron has ever voiced such a twat-brained query.

Only I still can’t see the cameras and microphones.

‘So, Mike,’ he says, and he smiles. I told you already he has perfect teeth. ‘Why don’t you tell us what you do for a living?’

And I figure: fuck it.

So I tell him.

Chapter One

Today is Wednesday. Today I’m delivering pizza.

Yesterday I was a minicab driver.

On Monday . . . let’s see. On Monday I was busy. On Monday I was a delivery man. Also, a jogger. On Monday night, I bought groceries and walked them back and forth outside this gigantic grey apartment block. Up the street. Round the roundabout. Back down again. Monday was hardcore.

Already I’ve had three different careers in this town. I only got here on Sunday.

This could be anywhere. This could be Bristol or Birmingham or Brighton. It could be Edinburgh. Maybe Norwich, maybe Guildford, maybe Exeter. Maybe this is Cardiff or Southampton or Bradford or Swindon or Liverpool. Nottingham, even.

Get a pin. Fetch a travel atlas of the UK, flip open to any page. Jab that puppy in there. Anywhere you like, maybe that’s where I am. Maybe that’s where I’m delivering this pizza. Maybe that’s where, yesterday, I sat out in the car park and waited for my fare.

With pizza delivery, the clothing is important. Don’t try to emulate one of the big chains. Not Dominoes or Herbies or Papa John’s. You choose one of those, you might bump into another employee, which, let me tell you, is awkward.

The one place this isn’t, the one place this couldn’t be, is London. I don’t work in London.

This is what you could call a Rule.

For the record, this is a town called Bracknell. But, really, truly, it could be anywhere.

Pizza firms like red. They like blue. They like baseball caps and Aertex shirts. They like name badges. Also bumbags for tips and change. Also chewing gum. Chewing some chewing gum is a good idea. Apart from the name badge and the gum, you can pick up the kit from a charity shop for a fiver. The name badge, you make yourself.

Bracknell is what happens when a capital city runs out of room.

Bracknell is what happens when London has been bombed to paste by the Luftwaffe and needs a place to lick its wounds.

The way I look at it, Bracknell is the twentieth century’s urban carcinoma.

Also, check out Milton Keynes. Also, Hatfield, Peterborough and Harlow. Corley. Northampton. These places are all what you might call secondary tumours.

A tumour, which the Americans spell without a second ‘u’, is a patch of cells that don’t want to stop. A tumour is your basic cellular workaholic. A tumour is cell division gone wrong. A tumour is where your body gets impatient. A tumour is evolution on speed. Abnormal or morbid growth, the dictionary says.

This is a metaphor. Bear with me here.

The gum, you buy at a local petrol station. This is important. Being seen, being recognised, is important. This isn’t about stealth. This isn’t about wearing black and bursting through windows. This is about misdirection.

Abseiling off the roof? Fine. Cool. Very Hollywood. Very stealthy. But how the hell did you get up there? Huh? You think Mrs Gibbs in flat 3A, on her way out to the bingo-rama, is going to smile politely at the balaclava-wearing ninja as he wanders past on the stairs? You think that evil shit of a dog, the one being taken out by Mr and Mrs Mudharki from 5C, the one on its way down for an evening crap in the car park, is going to wag its tail and dribble at the spicy aromas of Mr Suspicious-looking-SAS-wannabe as he sprints on by? Shit, no. He’s going to bark.

Yap.

Whatever.

The answer is pizza.

Sometimes you get a tumour wrapped up in a layer of fat. Like a snowball, only greasier. Sometimes the tumour can’t keep growing, on account of having nowhere to grow to. So what it does is relocate. It ‘seeds’.

This is called metastasis.

The gum, by the way, is just for appearances.

Think of that fat, that white capsule of soggy shit, that surrounding, suffocating bundle around the tumour, as suburbs. Think of the fatty layer as street after street after street of identikit houses with identikit cars. Think of that grease-thick spooge as two point four kids, stable middle-tier managerial job, firm Christian values, keep-your-perversions-in-the-cupboard Johnny Everyone.

A city, like, say, London, can’t grow when it’s wrapped up in fat. It’s got to relocate. Start a new colony.

Welcome to Bracknell.

The upshot is, Bracknell has no old buildings. Bracknell has no local history. Bracknell might as well have been dropped out of an army helicopter, prefab.

Insert slot A in shopping mall B. Score along the jagged pedestrian-path, then fold.

In Bracknell, the stones have no sense of weight. In Bracknell, there’s not much to respect. In Bracknell, everyone’s what you might call equal.

In Bracknell, equality is like suspicion. Everyone’s eligible.

In Bracknell, you want to avoid the stares and glares, you drive a minicab.

You deliver parcels.

You go for a jog.

You buy groceries and walk them home.

You deliver pizzas.

On the way up to the eighth floor, I nodded at the old lady. On the way up, the dog smelled the pizza and wagged its stubby little rat’s-arse of a tail. On the way up, I smiled and said hi to the mutt’s owners.

I said hi to the girl in the petrol station when I bought gum. On the way up, I’m chewing it.

These people, maybe, will remember me. It’s important to be polite.

On the eighth floor, flat 8A is empty. Mr Whatever-the-piss-his-name-is, with the steroid-shoulders and the moustache, he works evenings.

On the eighth floor, flat 8C is empty. Little Miss Single-parent makes a point of heading out with her kid every evening. Two hours, sometimes three. My guess is, swimming lessons. Piano lessons. Cinema. Junk food. Ice skating. Bowling.

My guess is, your-daddy-left-us. My guess is, he’s paying maintenance and she’s spoiling the kid rotten. My guess is, it’s none of my business.

On the eighth floor, flat 8B is not empty. On the eighth floor, I use the pizza box to jam open the lift. On the eighth floor, I rummage in my bumbag. In America, these are called fanny-packs.

There is no money in my bumbag.

In my bumbag there are several bits and bobs. There are two narrow rods, which look a little like hacksaw blades. There are two pairs of flesh-coloured latex gloves.

On the eighth floor, in flat 8B, someone is watching TV. I can hear the EastEnders theme tune.

In my bumbag there are two matchboxes which do not contain matches. They rattle a little when I shake them.

EastEnders is a soap opera about a community of miserable, melodrama-prone men and women living in a miserable, mythical part of London’s East End. Remember the tumour thing? The East End is Bracknell’s spiritual home.

In my bumbag there is a fixed-barrel Ruger Mk II .22, with a disposable silencer which I made myself. It’s easier than you might think.

I also made the pizza-company name badge, which says my name is Kristoff. My name is not Kristoff.

The two rods which look like hacksaw blades – guess what? They’re hacksaw blades, filed away in interesting patterns along each long edge. One is called a torsion bar. The other’s an insert bar. A more effective lock pick you will not find.

In the matchboxes are spare bullets, just in case.

I’m not here to deliver pizza.

Interview Room 2

It’s important you understand how simple this all is.

Back in Interview Room 2 – remember that? – I’m telling Jason Durant and his scowling partner, hey, it’s simple. I’m saying, there’s no mystery, no hidden agenda, no deep-rooted social psychosis. There’s no Freudian psychoanalysis bullshit, no externalised self-loathing manifesting as destructive tendencies, and there are no – no – no strings attached.

What I’m telling them is: it’s nothing personal.

What I’m telling them is: It’s. All. About. The. Money.

It’s like my personal little mantra.

‘Have you ever heard’, I ask them, ‘of George Bernard Shaw?’

This is fidgeting like maybe I could use a smoke. I don’t smoke.

I say, ‘He was a playwright.’

They look like maybe they already knew.

‘So?’ the woman says. The way she’s sitting, with both elbows on the table, it makes her blouse sort of ruck up in between each of its buttons, like a mountain range with its valleys fastened down. I shouldn’t be staring at her blouse. I should be Answering Questions and Paying Attention.

The point is, I can see her bra. In Interview Room 2, I feel like a twelve year old catching a look.

Her saying ‘So?’, that’s the first time she’s spoken.

‘George Bernard Shaw’, I say, oh-so-very-fucking-matter-of-fact, ‘said the people who get on, they’re the ones who get up and look for the . . . the circumstances they want. And if they can’t find them, they make them.’

I’m pushing the envelope labelled ‘Smart Arse’ here. I memorised that line years ago and I still misquoted it all to hell. I memorised that line in some dusty schoolroom with the same grey-yellow walls and the same fruity hospital ward detergent stink as Interview Room 2. That line appealed to me even then.

Borrowed wisdom. Give it a go.

Try casually dropping some double-clever quote into conversation, like you thought of it yourself. Try getting around the fact that people write things differently to how they say them. Try blagging your way through a discussion where everything’s already been said before, and everyone knows it.

‘What’s your point?’ the man says. Jason Durant. With his eyes, he’s telling me that he doesn’t give two self-removed foreskins for George Bernard Shaw, socially viable life-goals, or whether I, his captive, his piece-of-shit prisoner, his man-in-the-crosshairs, feel stupid or clever.

Jason Durant, I do not like one little bit.

The thing with borrowed wisdom is, pretty soon there’ll be nothing else. Pretty soon it’ll be that you can’t say a single thing that hasn’t been acid-etched on someone’s gravestone before.

One day we’ll run out of music.

You borrow too much wisdom, you forget what originality is.

The way I see it, at least I told them I was quoting from memory.

I still haven’t looked at the woman’s name. Her name badge is two inches from the lacy edge of her underwear.

‘The point is,’ I say, staying focused, ‘I’ve always known what I want.’

‘And what’s that?’

I smile, like our boy Jase must be thick not to get it. He pulls that shit on me, I pull it on him. This is karma.

‘Money,’ I say. And I smile wider. I smile and tell him things are oh-so-much, much simpler when what it all boils down to is basically deep-rooted personal avarice.

The woman’s bra, that tiny matinée-performance sneakpeek it’s treating me to, it puts me in mind of a doily. The kind you’d maybe put a drink down on, in some mouldering old lady’s home.

Speaking of which . . . ‘Could I have a glass of water?’ I ask.

Doilies are to old age what pornos are to adolescence. Cats too. I think of old ladies, I think of doilies and cats. I think of so much cat shit everywhere that little old Beryl, or Maude, or whoever-the-hell-she-is, she’s slipping about in it like a drunken slag at an ice-disco. I think of little Agnes or Mavis or Ethel, I think of her stumbling about, smelling of soap and piss and cat food, and I think of her brittle hip popping right out. Then it’s ambulances, operations, artificial joints, cyborganic grannies, blah blah blah.

Doilies and cats. Doilies and cats are to ancientness what erections are to puberty.

You’ve got to wonder how much money the excretion habits of the feline population of the UK is costing the NHS.

Me, I’m more a dog person.

In Interview Room 2, as the woman huffs and stands to fetch a drink, as her blouse creeps open a fraction more, as the perfect camber of a perfect breast sears itself across my eyes, I’m remembering how it felt to be twelve.

If these guys ask me to stand up any time soon, I’m in trouble.

And look, I know. A grown man shouldn’t be struggling against the disobedient behaviour of his prick in response to nothing but a frilly bit of underwear.

It’s just that this is probably the last real boob I’ll ever see, and if you don’t mind, I’d sort of like to enjoy it.

Interview Room 2

In Interview Room 2, the woman is back with my water. She’s brought it in a little paper cup. You know the kind, with the conical bottom, so either you drink it quick or it soaks through the recycled paper and wets your crotch. Crap little paper cups like this, the one thing you definitely can’t do with them is smash them on the table and use the jagged edge to fight your way to freedom. Crap little paper cups like this, they’re an insult to dramatic convention.

The woman, she sits and passes it to me without a word, and I’m thinking that at some point, maybe while she was out of the room, she’s adjusted her bra or her blouse or whatever. Suddenly the secret little peek hole is gone.

Bugger.

When she came in, the door squealed like a pissed-off pig.

Right there, maybe she notices me copping a look, because suddenly she’s doing this thing with her eyebrow – just one of them – that makes her look like she’s had a stroke and only half her face is working.

For some reason I’m suddenly wanting to say ‘sorry’.

Just in case you didn’t catch it, I kill people for money. Ogling tits should not be the end of the world.

I let it go. The way to look at it is, down here, down amongst the rapists and pimps and murdering crackhead sickos, she should be used to it by now. I shift my eyes as if I’m looking at her name badge.

Her name is Anna.

Her partner, Jason Durant, this coiffured Aryan Nazi pigshitter, who, from the look of him, definitely is a part-time pervert bondage freak, has more pressing things on his mind. I’ve just finished telling him the Bracknell story, hand movements and all, and his mouth hasn’t closed yet. Crap little paper cups like this one, it turns out they’re perfect for miming a strangulation, and my fingers are still wrapped around the soggy cone, held up for the moron to see.

His eyes are bugging out like someone pushed a tyre pump up his arse.

‘So . . . just to . . . reiterate,’ he says, like it’s for the benefit of the recording devices I still can’t see, ‘you admit to murder?’

I choke on my water, like in a cartoon, and it’s only down to some quick lipwork that I don’t douse these two goons, these two bright-eyed bastards, with spittle-spray.

He’s just heard me tell the sodding Bracknell story, and he’s fixating on that?

‘Didn’t you hear me?’ I say. ‘The bloke came back to life! He had holes in him. Fucking holes. Blood everywhere.’ More hand movements, another twitchy eyebrow from Little Miss Disapproval.

Jason Durant, this leering little arsewipe in a pinstripe suit, he waves it all aside.

‘Murder,’ he says, clinging to it.

He thinks I’m mental.

He thinks I’m cerebrally diseased. He thinks my frontal lobe is an ulcerous mess with damaged synapse pathways and degraded neural connections. He thinks I’m gaga. He thinks I’m some sort of hallucinating psycho.

Ahahaha.

‘I’m serious!’ I say.

‘Murder,’ he repeats, like he’s an icebreaker cutting through frozen bullshit. He counts on his fingers. ‘Then you’ve got breaking and entering, possession of a grade A narcotic, firearms offences . . .’

Un-be-fucking-lievable.

Some people, people like our man Jason Durant, you just cannot hold a rational conversation with. Some people will listen to the best joke in the world then correct you on your grammar. Some people will read the best book ever written, then complain about the title.

Some people will sit and listen to you saying how, shit, look, a dead man, an actual dead piece of meat, sat up, bled everywhere and called you a cunt, and still go off on one about the most ridiculous and irrelevant detail they can latch on to.

‘Murder,’ Jason says. ‘You’re paid to kill people. Correct me if I’m wrong.’

If I wasn’t down here in Interview Room 2, or outnumbered, or recovering from being shot twice by an Armed Response Unit, I’d fucking have him, that squinty-faced perfect-toothed slice of mullet-haired wank.

‘That’, I say, ‘isn’t the point.’

The woman leans forward.

Anna, she-of-the-perfect-tit, smiles.

‘Tell us the point, Mr Point.’

Contact 20

DAY: Wednesday.

TIME: 9.23 p.m.

LOCATION: Ariadne’s Café. Second table from right, facing window (dark outside: reflection on glass – no view). Now alone drinking coffee.

CONTACT REASON: Usual story. Mike spent day working, called my mobile on way home after job. Wants to meet up, chat, always here. Eats burgers and cheese. Talks, strengthening bonds. Important: checking all in place, final look @ his routine. Suppose you’d call this the final stretch – start of it, anyway. Crept up on me.

OBSERVATIONS: Right now, drinking medium-warm coffee. Crockery in café new, replaced since last visit (2 weeks ago, see CONTACT 19), but already chipped, discoloured. Currently: eavesdropping on conversations @ nearby tables. Lorry driver complaining re. cyclists, two builders grumbling about late shift, lucky tramp with tea and bacon roll (lucrative day somewhere) pestering flat-hunting student. Ariadne talking to herself by till.Place stinks of chips mixed with cigarette smoke and over-brewed coffee. Makes hair greasy. Writing this as quickly as possible – don’t want to stay.

Michael left fifteen minutes ago. Him today: skin paler than usual. Hair cropped (cut since last time?). Jacket sleeves too short, make hands look clumsy. Overall: awkward inside himself (teenager without spots). Today wearing faded jeans (boot-cut), new trainers, black shirt (short sleeves, grey buttons), cheap black jacket. Dressed to go out (usual routine – goes to club after meeting me. Where?). Cheeks too pink from hot shower and scrubbing, but in general: looks ordinary. Apologised several times for smell of burning. Said he had to get rid of clothing – ‘Messy job’.

New observation: every time he drinks = sluuurp. Very annoying; once noticed, can’t unnotice. Dimples in his cheeks suck in, chin goes tight, eyes close . . . sluuurp. Came close to getting up and going. More froth in his coffee than normal – didn’t seem to notice. Maybe made slurping worse? Either way, not necessary – poor manners.

NOTES: M still talking like he’s got an autocue – no pauses, no hesitations, little chunks, glib bollocks, platitudes and bad jokes. Been trying to surprise him with questions, to see if I can make him say ‘um’. No luck. Nearest I came: asked about day’s ‘Messy job’. No explanation; big frown. Looked shaken? Said: ‘All turned out OK – that’s what counts.’ Changed subject – very good at deflection. (Note: need to stay disinterested/uncomfortable re. his work.)

Conversation: mostly humdrum. Usual obsession with trivia, eg: comments on Ariadne’s Café, cholesterol, abattoir scrapings in burgers, fat content, hormones in livestock etc. Says nickname for cafés like this = ‘Greasy Spoon’. In America = ‘Choke ’n’ Puke’. Says: ‘Both are ironic. It just means people keep their expectations low. It’s the only way to make sure you’re never disappointed again.’

M looked pleased with himself (likes to feel competent at chitchat). Doing my best to look spellbound, smiling and nodding. Eventually decided to up stakes, ask searching question. Need to feel like I can go deeper; complete trust.

Reminded him of several times he’s mentioned his ‘plan’. Big deal to him, told him I was curious, wanted to be distracted from my own boring Nothing. Told him: self-distraction = new self-destruction = new self-improvement. Made him giggle. Two normal people, sharing homemade wisdom. Could see him relax. Deep breath, then speech. Longest he’s ever spoken in one chunk. Sounded rehearsed. Not verbatim, but gist goes:

‘Most blokes, this trade, they’ve got a’ – pauses for false thought – performing! – ‘a plan without a capital P. Mostly a vague thing. A sketchy idea of what and where and when and how. Maybe they’ll quit and open a bar. Maybe retire and spend their days playing golf. Dominoes. Maybe just booze themselves silly and die of cirrhosis.’

(Barely stops to breathe here. Note: discussing his job more casually now. Think he’s more comfortable with me knowing what he does.)

‘If not cirrhosis, sclerosis of the liver. Maybe pulmonary tuberculosis, or . . .’ (Etc. etc. Don’t remember all of it. Random trivia: very him.)

‘The point is, most blokes in this trade, it never comes off. Quitting, retiring, getting away. They say . . . “I’ll do it tomorrow”, then the stupid fucks take one more job.’

At this point, he sits back with a smile and says: ‘Tutankhamen thought he’d live for ever too.’

(Tangents, platitudes, smug bullshit, etc. Means nothing to anyone, makes him feel knowledgeable. Pleased with himself – can see it on his face. Wonder how many times he’s told all this to a mirror.)

‘That’s not for me, ending up like that. Wasting away, never getting out. So . . . I’ve looked into it. Researched, made notes, done my homework, you know? Worked it out.’

End of first chunk – pauses (slurps coffee). Makes it all sound scientific: data not opinion, scholarly investigation. Self-important; body held upright, eyes darting side to side. Has a habit of looking away (e.g. at floor, ceiling, his feet, fiddling with fingers etc.) then remembering to make more eye contact. All forced.

‘That’s how I know,’ he says. Encouraging my involvement – wants me to ask:

‘Know what?’ (Keeping him moving, but also: colluding in story. Good way of bonding, and all at his instigation. Excellent progress.)

Makes him put his hand in his pocket and bring out a square of paper, folded and sellotaped shut. Puts it down on table and sits back. Very strange. Eye contact.

Says how uncomfortable he finds London, England, all of Britain. ‘Stifling’, he says. Rambles a bit – don’t remember exact words. Not rehearsed, this section. Doesn’t sound as convincing. Says his work has taken him all over the place, fidgets, fiddles, looks away. End. . .